Tuesday, July 30, 2013

Feminism Is Dead. Take 4358. A Re-Posting.

These stories
are as regular as a menstrual cycle, you know. And about as exciting.
Feminism is dead so often that I wonder what kind of a zombie it must
be to be able to die again and again.

Another
interesting aspect of these stories is that they always focus on the
upper class women, mostly white ones and with lots of education. Yet
even such highly blessed women toss their careers into the corner! They
did so in the early 2000s, they did so in the 1990s, and now they do it
in 2013.

The novel aspect of these newest death throes
is that the article mentions a famous evolutionary psychologist, David
Buss, who firmly believes in the innateness of sex roles. You see, our
prehistoric women suddenly don't seem to have been gatherers, after
all, who might have provided most of the calories in that
gathering/hunting mix but cavewives:

All
those bachelors’ vows of future bathroom cleanings, it turns out, may
be no more than a contemporary mating call. “People espouse equality
because they conform to the current normative values of our culture,”
says University of Texas evolutionary psychologist David Buss. “Any man
who did not do so would alienate many women—yes, espousing values is
partly a mating tactic, and this is just one example.” At least in
one area, there’s scant penalty for this bait and switch. Last year,
sociologists at the University of Washington found that the less
cooking, cleaning, and laundry a married man does, the more frequently
he gets laid.

...

“My
sense,” says Buss, “is that younger women are more open to the idea
that there might exist evolved psychological gender differences.”
Among my friends, many women behave as though the evolutionary
imperative extends not just to birthing and breast-­feeding but to
administrative household tasks as well, as if only they can properly
plan birthday parties, make doctors’ appointments, wrap presents,
communicate with the teacher, buy the new school shoes. A number of
those I spoke to for this article reminded me of a 2010 British study
showing that men lack the same mental bandwidth for multitasking as
women.

In other words, women belong
in the home because of evolution. That cannot be proved, of course, but
it's enough if women believe in it, because then they will stay at
home. Or will feel guilt for not doing so.

I am bored with these kinds of stories as is pretty apparent from what I wrote above. The reason is this:

Not
all women are ambitious in the job sense. Not all women want those
kinds of jobs. But then neither do all men. The society condones the
lack of ambition in women but disapproves of it in men. Thus, the
number of men who would report a desire to be a stay-at-home-dad will
probably be lower than the number of men who really would prefer to be a
stay-at-home-dad, and to some extent the reverse is true for women.

The
point is that we have different talents and different desires. And the
previous paragraph could equally well have been written by saying that
not all women are suited to taking care of small children or wish to do
that full-time, even if they love their own children more than anything
in the world. And the same applies for men. And so on.

But
the stories are not written that way. They are written to apply to all
women on one side, and all men on the other side. Thus, all men
obviously somehow wish to work in the labor force 24/7 and all women
obviously get kidnapped by their maternal instincts and toss their jobs
overboard if they possibly can.

Thus, the basic setup
is this: Men will work in the office or the factory or in the fields
24/7, no matter what. If that is taken as a given, how should women
behave?

The other reason I'm utterly bored with these
kinds of stories is that the way labor markets are arranged is kept as
the invisible elephant in them. Those stresses the article speaks about
are arranged stresses, largely caused by impossible expectations about
working hours and the absence of good childcare and proper vacation
time.

Though I must admit that this story is slightly
more interesting than the usual one because it hints at the idea that
the ability to organize children's birthdays and the ability to cook and
clean is somehow genetically wired in women but not in men. Which is
unlikely when you consider that the most famous people in those types of
fields tend to be men. Like the most famous chefs. Even the most
famous childcare experts of the past are men.

We should
also see enormous catastrophies in the families of all single fathers.
If men lack the necessary hard-wiring to remember children's physician
and dentist appointments, how come the studies I've seen of
single-father families suggest that those fathers do a pretty good job,
on average?

So I fell for this "controversial" post in
the way it was intended: Get a lot of links, create a lot of
discussion, and the advertising income will flow in! Bad Echidne. She
will get no chocolate mousse today.
----
Added later: This is a good take on the article.

-----
I should go through my archives and put together all the posts about the death of feminism! It tends to die several times every year, poor thing.

Support the Blog

More Ways To Support The Blog

About Me

For Readers Abroad

Permalink Notice

Because of changes created by Blogger, older permalinks to my archived posts no longer work. My apologies for that. The year-and-month in the old permalinks are correct, however, so you may be able to find the post you are looking for with some work. Alternatively, e-mail me for the currently functioning permalink.